Tag Archives: marijuana and aids

Marijuana and HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is one of the most common uses of medical marijuana. When appropriately prescribed and monitored, marijuana can provide immeasurable benefits for the health and well-being of HIV/AIDS patients. Marijuana can remedy a patient’s debilitating fatigue, restore appetite, diminish pain, remedy nausea, cure vomiting and curtail down-to-the-bone weight loss. Because the symptoms of this deadly disease — primarily nausea, loss of appetite, and pain — are so targeted to the efficacy of marijuana, patients gain incredible relief and improvement to their quality of life.

Pain Relief

For some HIV patients, their daily regimen includes taking handfuls of pills that they hope will regulate the pain that they have. Many of these prescription drugs include opiates that can be harmful on certain organs in the body if not dangerous. Furthermore, while these prescription drugs may help with some symptoms, they don’t seem to be as helpful as marijuana as a substitute.
Research findings found that there was a 30 percent decrease in pain for those smoking marijuana, instead of those smoking a placebo. When the marijuana was combined with the prescription medication, the benefits for pain reduction were even greater.

Improved Immune Function

There are plenty of jokes going around about getting the munchies after smoking weed. However, this stereotype may not be such a bad thing for patients who are suffering with HIV. Many of the drugs they take have negative effects on eating habits and the hunger of HIV patients. Furthermore, the immune system as a whole is weaker with HIV, therefore making it harder to gain and maintain healthy weight. Studies looking into the effects of marijuana on HIV patients, it is found that marijuana did not seem to be unsafe in HIV patients, especially in CD4 and CD8 cell counts. These RNA levels allowed the patients to gain, on average, four or more pounds in their clinical tests.

Positive Outlook

Finding out that you are HIV positive is probably something that you can only comprehend the pain when it actually happens to you. Having to change your entire lifestyle, starting new medical treatments and telling those around you are all tasks that are never easy and can lead to plenty of frustration and even depression. While marijuana cannot permanently cure all of the problems, it should also be said that marijuana can have positive effects on a persons mood and outlook on things. Cannabis is a major industry now and has been created, tested and delivered in a variety of different ways. Even if you do not want to smoke, you can find edible cannabis. And you can also find cannabis that will affect your mood depending on the type of high that you are looking for with either a sativa or an indica blend. Instead of the numbing and dulling effects of opiates and other drugs, marijuana can give new life to an HIV patient.

Since the 90s, a pill form of marijuana has been prescribed to treat appetite and weight loss in HIV/AIDS. But new findings suggest marijuana may even help combat the disease.

Marijuana may stop the spread of HIV

More recently, scientists found that THC might have a helpful function: stopping the spread of HIV in monkeys. According to researchers, monkeys that were treated with high THC doses on a daily basis had more healthy cells than those who did not. While these findings are preliminary, and have not been observed in humans, they are promising.

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For patients with advanced AIDS and terminal cancer, the apparent benefits some derive from smoking marijuana outweigh any substantiated or even suspected risks. At least for now, it is a comfort marijuana makes better a patient’s debilitating fatigue, restore appetite, diminish pain, remedy nausea, cure vomiting and curtail down-to-the-bone weight loss.

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